


The Pitfalls of Being a Good Guy

by Motchi



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Crack Pairing, Crack Treated Seriously, Drama, F/M, Mild Smut, Rarepair, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 08:14:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21096272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Motchi/pseuds/Motchi
Summary: There are times when Jack Sparrow remembers what it's like to be a good guy.





	The Pitfalls of Being a Good Guy

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the het_challenge comm back in 2007.

  
There are times when Jack Sparrow remembers what it's like to be a good guy. It usually hits him at night, and usually after a long bout of indulgence. Often, when the darkness howls especially close to the edges of his soul, he finds himself seeking temporary salvation in either a bottle rum or a willing woman.  
  
When he walks into The King's Knob, he's not quite sure which one he's seeking, but he knows he needs something. His eyes scan the busy, noisy room, and it doesn't take him too long to see her. She's a bright spot in the room, a beacon on a misty evening—which he finds ironic, given that everything she's wearing is black.  
  
"Lovely gels shouldn't be drinking alone," he tells her. It's a line he's used before, to better effect, and in better places than a suggestively named bar that smells of smoke and boiled eggs.  
  
She lifts her head and gives him an appraising stare, but underneath it is a quiet desperation, a loneliness he can relate to, and he tells himself that all he really wants is the bottle of rum in her possession.  
  
Her head tilts to the side in wordless acquiescence. She pushes the nearly full bottle to the empty spot next to her. He takes the chair there and perches himself at the edge of it, with legs casually crossed.  
  
"Not from around here, no?" Jack takes in her leather corset, odd leather half-skirt, and visible leather knickers, and comes to the conclusion that she likes leather. His kind of woman, really. And he can see her legs.  
  
"No, I'm not."  
  
Not very talkative either. Definitely his kind of woman.  
  
"So tell me, what sort of elucidationing would a lone lass like you have for coming to a place like this?" He leans an elbow on the table and props his chin on a fist. "Because my tremendous intuitive sense of the female creature informs me that you are troubled."  
  
She takes a sip from her glass, real slow-like, and his tremendous intuitive sense tells him she's thinking about whether or not handing the truth to ol' Jack is worth her time.

"I thought I might find him here," she finally says.  
  
"Ah. Man troubles. The worst kind." Jack gives her a knowing look and taps the side of his head. "Obviously scuppered in the head."  
  
"Who? Me?" Her spine stiffens.  
  
"No," he says hastily. "Him."  
  
Her shoulders lower an inch, but still she eyes him. "Scuppered? What does that mean?"  
  
"Scuppered..." Jack waves a ringed hand as he searches for the right words. "Broken...a little off...not working right... A fool, in other words. He's a fool—eh, what's your name?"  
  
"Tifa."  
  
"Ah! Tifa...lovely name, that." A nod of the head is accompanied by his best smile. "He's a scuppered fool, Tifa. Let us pronounce it sound and have a drink, shall we? Cheers." He clinks her glass with the bottle and steals a quick peek at her legs.  
  
"Why do you say that?"  
  
He pauses with the bottle halfway up to his lips. "Why do I say what?"  
  
"Why do you say he's a fool? You don't even know him... You don't even know me, for that matter." She sighs and stares at the glass curled in her hands. "..._I_ don't even know me."  
  
Jack studies her for a moment before finally tipping the bottle back. She's clearly in need of a little appreciation, he's clearly in need of a little escape, and a woman of her caliber wasn't an opportunity often presented.  
  
He sets the rum down on the table with an air of decisiveness and announces, "Then I will help you find yourself."  
  
"You will?"  
  
"Aye. Captain Jack Sparrow, at your service."  
  
"And how will you service me?"  
  
Jack can't help the naughty chuckle, blames it on second nature, but he says, "By helping you find out who you aren't."  
  
"Who I'm _not_..." She rolls the words around on her tongue. "Yes," she agrees, "that might work."  
  
"Shall we drink to it, then?" There's a sound of glass against glass, and he watches, impressed, as she downs the liquor in her hand.  
  
"I am not a drinker, usually," Tifa explains with a sheepish smile, finding his eyes on her as her glass is refilled.  
  
"Cheers to that." More glass against glass. A more reserved sip from her this time. "What else aren't you, love?"  
  
Tifa traces a crack in the table with a fingertip. "I'm not his light. And I'm not someone worth returning to, apparently."  
  
"Then why are you waiting?"  
  
"I'm not." She sets her jaw stubbornly. "Not anymore."  
  
"No more scuppery," Jack agrees. "Cheers!"  
  
"Cheers," Tifa echoes, and takes a long swallow from her drink. "You know what else I'm not?"  
  
"What, love?"  
  
"I'm not a woman."  
  
Jack almost spits out his rum at that. "Come again?" He eyes her chest and thinks to himself that those ladies sure fooled him.  
  
"I worded that wrong." Tifa frowns in thought. "I mean to say, I don't _feel_ like a woman. I don't feel attractive or desirable or sexy. I feel like... I don't know... blah. It's no wonder I'm not worth returning to."  
  
Jack runs a hand over his chin and tugs on his beard thoughtfully. "That's interesting."  
  
"What's interesting?"  
  
"Worth and no worth." Jack takes in the dark of her eyes, the line of her jaw, the silk of her black hair. "You're a stunning specimen of pulchritudinicity, a right winsome and toothsome and, uh, charmsome lass." He flashes his teeth at her. "Darling, don't you ever hear that?"  
  
There's a little wrinkle between her eyebrows. "No," she says, sighing. "Mostly I hear I'm strong and kind and too patient."  
  
"And perhaps you are, love," Jack says with a knowing twinkle, "but wouldn't it be nice to remember you're a woman in addition to a saint?"  
  
Tifa laughs ruefully and swallows the rest of her drink down. "Yes. Yes, it would. Even if just for a little while."  
  
"Then let us declare that Captain Jack Sparrow is aroused by you, here and now, henceforth, ever after, unto eternity”—he makes a vague twirling gesture with his hand—“et cetera, et cetera, and other fancy words." Jack stops and examines her. "There... I don't suppose that worked, did it?"  
  
Tifa laughs again, a little less ruefully. "'Fraid not. But it was a nice thought."  
  
Jack sighs. "Then I suppose I shall just have to show you."  
  
"What?" She almost drops her glass. "Show me? How?"  
  
"Most expertisely, I assure you," Jack says in a voice soaked in innuendo. He places a hand on her knee as he squints suggestively at her.  
  
Her leg jerks upwards and nearly slams his hand into the underside of the table. "Oh! I'm so sorry!" Tifa cries, then promptly hiccups. A few giggles leak out of her as she takes his hand and strokes the top of it. "I'm so clumsy sometimes. I didn't hurt you did I?"  
  
Jack swallows and shifts in his chair. She really is a lovely thing. Sweet, too. He thinks maybe he should leave before he does something he might regret. Something about her seems too precious to be sullied by his darkness.

But then the desperate loneliness creeps back into her eyes, and he hears himself say, "My tremendous intuitive sense of the female—and male—creature informs me that we both need something a little stronger than rum. Savvy?"  
  
"Show me," she says.

* * *

  
  
  
The alleyway behind the bar smells a few levels better than the inside of the bar, much to Jack's surprise. Not exactly the best place for a seduction, but he knows their time together is meant to be short-lived.  
  
He kisses her, tentatively, waiting for a slap or some other sign that this isn't what she wants. But she leans into him, opens her mouth wide, and invites his tongue and other parts of him to participate. She's not hesitant at all, proof of how much she needs this, and it isn't long before he's navigating his way around unfamiliar things like a zipper, a bra, shorts, and panties.  
  
They remove her confusing skirt-apron contraption and spread it out on the wooden crate behind her. Then he's lifting her up, setting her down and gently pushing her back—pausing to admire the way her hair fans out underneath her, the way the moon makes her skin look flawless. If he were a romantic man, he'd describe her as the curve of a sail bending in a good wind or the slow beauty of the evening sun melting into the sea. But he's not, and she's not; she's a person, starved and hungry for human contact. He follows her cues, cupping and stroking, stirring her to life.  
  
But there's something untreasurable about it, something self-indulgent about what he's doing that makes him uncomfortable. He thinks to himself, _She deserves more than one night._ She certainly deserves more than an anchorless sea rover like himself. But the old pirate in him surfaces and reminds him, _That's all you have, and you're all she's got._  
  
He kisses her again, slower and more purposeful, and feels her melt beneath him. She smells like a bath, like fruit and flowers and femininity—things the hopeful boy in him had always imagined a woman to smell like. And she tastes like she smells; his eager tongue runs over, in, and around everything he can reach. The underside of a breast makes her swear impatiently. There's a ticklish spot behind her knee. The first delve inside of her sends her fingers into his hair.  
  
She's a sighing, writhing thing under his worship, and as his palms realize they've never felt skin so smooth, his conscience realizes he's stealing a little bit of something he doesn't deserve. _But o__nce a pirate, always a..._

_No, not tonight._  
  
She moans as he enters her, and her hands grip at his coat like it's a lifeline. Her knees bend and bracket his ribs as he pulls out and sinks into her again. Everything of hers tightens around him—her fingers, her legs, the pitch of her cries, her warmth and wetness—as he lunges and withdraws, ebbs and flows. She gathers him into herself with her sounds and her sex, and he's loath to leave.  
  
"Tifa, tell me, love." His hands find the juncture of where her hips and thighs meet as he leans in to take a nipple in his mouth.  
  
"Jack," she pants. "I feel—"  
  
"You feel—?" He gives her breast one last flick of the tongue before abandoning it in favor of a deeper angle.  
  
"I feel—" Her mouth falls open at his new position. Her breaths come a little shorter as she strains and pulls toward an end. "I feel—"  
  
"Sexy? Desirable? Like a woman?"  
  
She squeezes her eyes shut and nods, too close to the edge for words.  
  
"You are." She is. She’s parted lips, the curve of a throat, an arched spine—starlight suits her.  
  
She comes around him then, trembling and sobbing his name. He stays for as long as he can possibly stand before pulling out of her body and hurriedly putting temptation behind his trousers.  
  
"Jack?" His sudden retreat has her sitting up and reaching for him in confusion.  
  
"Shhh, love." He kisses her protests and runs his hands over every exposed part of her, memorizing, before his clever fingers start putting her back into decency.  
  
"But... I don't understand. What about you?"  
  
"I can't," he tells her, and leaves it at that. When she looks like she's about to say more, he adds, "Don't worry about it. This was more than enough for me." He pauses for a moment, listening, but the howling has gone silent. He nods in satisfaction and smiles. "Finish dressing, darling, while we're yet still undiscovered."  
  
Jack watches as she pulls on her discarded things, and once she's finished, she wraps her arms around his waist as he gathers her in for a farewell embrace. His fingers take one last plunge into her hair. "So what will you do now, love?"  
  
"I don't know." There's a bittersweetness to her voice. "Maybe I'll try to find my own light."  
  
"A sound idea. I like it."  
  
Tifa tilts her head up to look at him. "Will you be here when I do?"  
  
Jack takes a deep breath and releases her. "No, my darling, I'm afraid not." He turns his face to the direction of the harbor. "I'll be somewhere out there."  
  
"So what should I—?"  
  
"Walk ten paces that way, turn the corner, and then walk about another twenty until you're out of the alley. Beyond that? Forget about me. Go find your light and be happy, Tifa." _With someone else._ And the old pirate in him adds, _But at least I got to have you for a little while_.  
  
Her shoulders wilt, and he can see how she's fighting tears, but she's smart enough to know that what they have isn't love. "Thank you, Jack," Tifa whispers. "Maybe someday..." She yanks the ring from her finger and presses it into his hand before quickly making her exit, head bowed low.  
  
Jack falls heavily onto the crate she had been beautiful on only minutes ago, and places the ring into a pocket, not quite ready to deal with it just yet. He feels terrible, like he's just taken a cannonball to the gut. Every part of him—some parts more than others—wants to run after her and ask her to sail away with him, to take a stab at being _his_ light for a while.  
  
But he doesn't. He stays firmly planted amidst the smell of old eggs and lingering flowers, and remembers why he hates being a good guy.

**Author's Note:**

> This author replies to comments unless on hiatus.


End file.
